Patrick Swirc was born in Saint-Etienne and studied at the Vevey School of Photography in Switzerland before following a striptease artist to Pigalle. In Paris he began making portraits and worked as a press photographer, including journals such as Libération, Elle, Télérama, Studio and Time Magazine. Since abandoning that work he has pursued his obsession with distant parts of the world, creating morbidly dark erotic images.